Brendan Kelly

So who’s laughing about Lappy now – or Maxim Lapierre’s Stanley Cup heroics

People love to make fun of Maxim Lapierre. They call him the ultimate diver. Say that he yaps too much. Is afraid to fight. All true.

But you know what? If the Vancouver Canucks end up winning the Stanley Cup this spring, it’ll be at least partly thanks to M. Lapierre. He scored the lone goal of the game Friday to give the Canucks a 3-2 lead over the Boston Bruins and the opportunity to close this baby down Monday night in Beantown. Sure it wasn’t a particularly beautiful goal – he was standing right there in front of a pretty well empty net – but he got the puck to the back of the net – something no other Canuck could do in game five.

Ben Kuzma from the Vancouver Province suggests many players on other teams would like to fit Max with a straight-jacket and he is by all accounts one extremely irritating guy. But he does score big playoff goals. He did it twice last year for the Montreal Canadiens during their oh-so-surprising post-season spring and he did it again Friday night.

At first, it didn’t look like one of Lapierre’s great nights. When Zdeno Chara poked him in the chest with his stick earlier, Lapierre went into some major Oscar-worthy theatrics and you could see the ref apparently telling Lapierre to knock it off. But then he scored The Goal – and all was forgiven.